The Environmental Dilemma--Optimism or Despair?: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of Trends, Issues, Perspectives and Options

For countless millenia humans extended their domain around the world, gradually using more of nature's resources. High death rates from famine, disease, and other perils restricted population growth. Since 1800, innovations in science, energy, medicine, transportation, communication, farm and factory production, marketing beliefs, customs, and social relationships have drastically altered both natural and cultural environments. Globally, death rates have fallen dramatically without equivalent reductions in birth rates while per-capita consumption of many natural resources has increased. Many global trends are unsustainable and prompt action is needed to avoid calamities in the decades ahead. Expanding environmental programs mitigate many trends but fail to reverse most of them. Rival factions differ on the costs and benefits of development. Some people have grave concerns about pollution, waste disposal, forest and wetland depletion, species extinction, crowding, food shortages, and a resurgence of epidemic diseases, but others downplay these fears and oppose regulatory solutions. We humans have the technology, knowledge, and resources to resolve our dilemma, but lack the consensus and commitment. It is what we accomplish that counts, not what we boast of being able to do. Failure to act now can cost future generations much more than it would cost now. Environmental information is cast and expanding, but often highly technical, narrowly focused, or self-serving, underscoring the need to summarize, integrate, and interpret findings for concerned publics.